The After Sermon /// What's your thing beneath the thing?

Welcome to The After Sermon by Plum Creek Church.

This bite-sized discussion is where we get to sit down with our communicators and ask a few follow up questions connected to the weekend message, unpack it on a deeper level, and explore how it all relates to our journey of following Jesus more fully.

In this episode of The After Sermon, Eric sits down with Steve Carter right after the weekend message to explore the deeper reasons behind the things we do, say, and react to. Together they unpack the idea that beneath every outburst, escape pattern, or recurring struggle is often a wound, story, or formation process shaping us in ways we don’t always recognize.

Steve shares how triggers can become invitations for healing instead of shame, why spiritual formation matters more than most people realize, and how practices with Jesus slowly reshape us over time. The conversation moves through topics like generational trauma, rehearsing new ways of living, emotional health, and what it actually looks like to become more like Jesus—not instantly, but intentionally.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “Why did I react like that?” this conversation offers hope that transformation is possible, healing is available, and it’s never too late to begin becoming someone new.

This conversation is also available on our YouTube channel along with the full message that this discussion is based on.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@plumcreekchurch

You can learn more about Plum Creek Church by visiting our website as well.

Website: https://plumcreek.church/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the after sermon podcast where we get a chance to sit down with our communicator from this week, literally directly off the stage, and pick up on any themes that maybe weren't covered when you preached your message. So this is Steve Carter, my good friend, and becoming a good friend of Plum Creek. Yeah. So super glad you're here. Thank you. Thanks for hanging with us. You literally just came off the stage. And I know you've thought a lot about this whole idea of the thing beneath the thing, the reasons we do the things that we do. And we're going to invite everybody to listen to the whole message, but maybe just like give me 60 seconds on some of the journey you've been through, understanding what is some of the reasons we do what we do.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah. I think every one of us have had one of those moments where we just found ourselves going, what was going on within me? Yeah, why did I say that? And why did I react in that way? And I just found myself being fascinated because, and you get this as a pastor for so many years, and you sit with people, and it's often in those moments of the aftermath that they're trying to figure out why this happened. And I just kind of went on a journey with some therapists, uh, with some scholars, with some uh pastors and people I just respected to go, yeah, I think if we could understand why we actually do what we do and really invite God into it and what the Bible says, I think we'll actually find ourselves living with less regret or walking with more grace and more healing. And and so that's kind of the the the journey that the thing beneath the thing became.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

What what what did you learn? Like I know you learned lots, yeah. Uh, but like what did you really learn?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I think the one of the biggest was I always saw the tr when I got triggered, so that's the setup that sets us off. So if you think about like a stand-up comic, they are setting you up and then they turn it and it and and it sets you up or off for a laugh. The same thing happens when we get triggered. There's a setup, our day is going one way, and then something happens and it taps in uh to a pothole, to a to a wound, and it sets us off. I always saw that set off as a permission to escape. Maybe not like consciously, but subconsciously, permission to be like, go buy something, right? Uh go go do something to just try to numb out. And I didn't connect that decision to, as Tim Keller would say, a counterfeit God to idolatry. And instead of it being a permission to escape, now I'm seeing when I get triggered as an invitation for healing in God's grace. Because that trigger is almost this prop, if you will, this um this dashboard indicator that there is something beneath the surface that isn't right or is fractured or is hurting, is a wound, and it needs some of the Lord's tenderness and care. And so that invitation brought not shame, but curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

So I here's what I'm hearing you say, because I think about oftentimes the way that we treat or handle triggers, right? Well, one that's become a pretty common phrase in the culture. Um, we typically trigger happens, you freak out, or whatever, and you on the other side of it either want to bury it, hide it, um, like get rid of it. And what you're saying is, oh no, my journey is is now to start paying attention to it. A completely different disposition, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Totally, totally. And you think about generational trauma.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

What is that? It's like wounds that just got passed down. Yep. The same wounds that just got passed down. And it comes to a moment where someone's like, ah, it stops with me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring that to the surface and do the healing and the work so that my kids and my grandkids don't have to endure this. And and really deep down, if you just bury it and and try to shame your way through it or power your way through it, it's gonna leak out. Yeah, it just is. That pothole will become a sinkhole in some capacity. It might not be the same way, the same kind of practice that you saw maybe from uh your kind of generational parents or patterns. Um, but it's gonna have the same motivation and spirit that will pass down to your kids. And for me, I just was like, I just want to break some cycles.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Well, that's what I was gonna ask you, because you wrote a book on this. It's called The Thing Beneath the Thing. So you spent a lot of time thinking about it. Yeah. What was the core motivation? Why did you decide to do this?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

I honestly, I had just seen some people I deeply, deeply loved and admired um make some decisions along the way that um didn't just affect them, but affected everyone around them. And when I saw the collateral damage up close, it it just made me like, if I don't figure this out for myself, um, I am susceptible to the same level of collateral damage. Yeah. And so I just wanted to learn deep down, um, why do I do what I do? And I and I'd caught myself enough. Um, because you know, like we're we're we're we're uh just coming into like social media and and cameras everywhere in the last like decade. Right. Well when we were starting out in ministry, we didn't have that. No, but now it's like you're everything is being brought to light with Twitter and that there's something that's really beautiful and healing and about that, but now you can't just hide and be like, I don't understand what I do. Yeah, like you there has to be some internal health and work to be done so that we are actually leading from a place of integrity and wholeness and health rather from transferring brokenness and pain and trauma and shame down.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

So it's interesting because your book certainly deals with like a what we would typically call mental health issues. Yes. But you, like I've known you for a long time. You are, I'm gonna use the word expert. I am gonna use the word expert. I think you're an expert on formation and spiritual growth. Can you help bridge the gap? Because I sometimes wonder if in Christian spaces we put those into two buckets. Oh, well, that book is, or that thought is no, that's mental health stuff. And then there's spiritual health stuff, but but I think there's something going on even within your book and within you, like use this word integration, reintegration. Can you talk about like through your book and through your thinking, how that is happening and why that's so important?

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Well, honestly, that I feel like this is why I've engaged with Plum Creek because I feel like um you, Pastor Doug, like you you all are modeling this. Um, because again, so often to your point, we bifurcate. Yeah, right. We put this over here and like therapy, or this over here and formation, or this over here, and just like church, or this over here, and just Bible. And I think that there's something about bringing all of these together. What formation does is formation gives you the practices that actually help bring wholeness and healing to those areas that um are in desperate need of God's goodness and grace. And too often people go, Oh, that's just navel gazing, or that's not actually like helpful. But but but think about it. Think about it like this. If when you think about tithing, money's a prop. That's all it is. But tithing is the practice that actually makes you generous. Generous, right? There's a practice. So you don't you don't just like drift towards generosity, right? Yeah, like you act when when you be actually surrender and trust God with the first 10% that comes in, what ends up happening is all of a sudden you become less clingy, more generous of spirit. That's your language. You become more generous of spirit. That that is a fruit of formation when everything in culture is like just hold on to yours, live live a life of scarcity. Well, the only way to break that is through formation.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

And formation will address why am I scared when it comes to relate to money? What is my relationship with money? Which will typically bring you back to your childhood table or what you picked up when you when you saw um people handling money. Totally. You know, and I often will say, um, humans are very perceptive, they're just crappy interpreters of reality. We will perceive and tell and craft a story, but how we interpret that story, if it's not through the scriptures, through the lens of formation, will typically have us drift towards protection and preservation rather towards health and formation. And so formation just looks at that area, that that ache, that wound, and begins to give you the necessary tools, practices, postures that actually attack those poisons that bring healing so that you can be everything God intended you to be. Well, we were having this conversation on another podcast. Follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

But how and we could talk about this for a while. This whole idea of bifurcation, it's happening all over the place. It even happens the moment you say formation, there is a bunch of Christians who go, Oh, but that's a stream. Yep, that's a thing, that's not my thing, and yet there is this reality. We are being shaped all the time. That's all that all that means. Formation isn't a stream, it isn't like uh another thing that you can or can't do. Like you are getting shaped by something, wounds and traumas that's shaping you, right? And then your responses out of that trauma continues to shape you, or uh so you are, and so the the real question is these practices. When you talk of the practice, it is when we get in the driver's seat and decide, I just don't want to take that shape anymore. It's like Wonder Twins Power. Remember that? Do you remember that? You remember that cartoon? Yes. Dude, first off, I hate all the streaming services because one of the greatest moments of life was Saturday morning. You knew every single kid in the world was sitting around their TV. Now you can watch cartoons anytime you want. I sound like a humbook. Wonder Twins Power, right? They would take the form of, but this is what practices do. It's like Wonder Twins Power, and we begin to take a different shape, all of us.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

I think that's huge. It is, it is, and I think again, um, you know, I played college basketball, play's not the right word. I sat the bench, but I got free shoes. But I uh I I remember we we would do the walkthrough. Yeah. And the walkthrough before game day was we we we knew their defense, we knew how we were gonna approach it, so that we could literally rehearse the playbook so that when we were in the game, yeah, we actually didn't just know, just kind of work off like what we think we should do, we actually knew the play. And formation actually is a chance to rehearse and practice, they call it well, spiritual exercise, a spiritual practice. Right. Why? Because you're rehearsing so that when you are in that moment, you can be reshaped, reformed to a way of Jesus, a way that looks like Jesus. And again, when I think about like the Lord's will, people like sometimes, oh man, it's just like one job or one school. No, no, no, no. The way that Oortberg will talk about it, John Ortberg, is that is that it's it's actually not about some place or some job, it's about who you are becoming. Yeah. So so how do I become someone without a spiritual practice or entering into a spiritual formation process because I I will become something. Yeah, it's either drifting towards the streams of culture or in a really deliberate intentional way of saying, I just want to be, as Orbig would say, the magnificent person of God's image that is reflecting the character of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I am a masterpiece. But here's what I hear you saying. We all have moments where where we look at our lives, everybody, and and we think, I'm better than this, I could do better than this, I want to be better than this. Where most of us fall short is I think it's two parts. One is we have very little understanding of where this came from, and we have no rehearsal rhythm to shape us into something any different. So the reason why you come back to the same arguments with your spouse or the same interactions is because there has been from the last time you were triggered, no rehearsal of anything different. Yeah. And it is foundational to us becoming Ephesians 2.10, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

You just named it. And I think if if there's anything you could take away from the podcast, it's just exactly what he just said. Boom, I just spiked to the ball. It's just is that moment, is that moment is we are not actually reflecting on what was really happening within us that predicated that reaction. Yep. Um, what caused that? And we don't have or don't want the spiritual practices that can actually address that pain point that can actually transform us. And so we don't have, we're not doing either. So when you don't do either, you're stuck. You're stuck. Totally stuck. And then all of a sudden, people are like, I just gotta try harder. That's where it gets. I gotta try harder, I gotta do more. And and they end up adding um adding to an already busy life rather than stepping back and saying, help me understand this and teach me this, and let me walk in your spirit and in your way. And you're not gonna get it overnight. Like when I go to the gym only once, I'm not gonna look like Ryan Gosling. Um, and if I go to the gym, I'm never gonna look like Ryan Gosling. But like, but but there's a there's there's this moment of just this ongoing practice that once you look back after three weeks, you start to see those little gains. You find yourself like in a in a moment with your child, and you're like, I actually responded with patience. Yeah, I showed up different. And that's that's what formation can offer you. It's a bit of like a uh 401k, like it it the compound interest that grows from these practices over a lifetime. Um I'll end with this. Okay, I was the first time I met my wife's grandfather, it was at a wedding, and he was the best man for his grandson. And he got up at the best man speech and he said, and he gave one of the greatest best man speeches I've ever heard. He's 80 years old, and he led everyone going, let's go three hip hip hours, and he was like, hip hip hooray. And I walked up to my now father-in-law, and I was like, Your dad is incredible. And I'll never forget what he said. He goes, Growing up, that wasn't my dad. Like, I don't I didn't know that man. That man has been transformed. Wow, and I've thought about that. It is for some of us here going, Man, I that's too late. No, no, no, it's never too late. Um, but when you look back, I hope even as a communicator, as a father, as a pastor, as a husband, as a friend, people are like, Man, he is just continuing to be transformed more and more, not into the image of the world or the image of culture, but into the image and likeness of Christ.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Bro, listen, so much we literally could keep riffing on this. So let me make a couple of invitations. First, if you want to hear more about uh this message that Steve delivered this weekend, I I'd go uh to our YouTube channel. You can also listen into it in any of your podcast platforms. Listen to the message that Steve just did. You can pick up his book, The Thing Beneath the Thing. It's a fantastic read that will start to help you understand what this looks like. And then shameless plug for our podcast follow-up. One of the things that Steve and I are doing are exploring these topics more in depth. Follow X up and you can hear more, and we'll go in in depth. Listen, we're really glad that you tuned in for just a bit to hear more. And Steve, super grateful for you, bro.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Thank you. Thanks, man. Grace and peace. Yeah.